Attention poetry mavens: any suggestions for good contemporary poets (either in general or particular collections)? Have sudden appetite but very little idea where to start. Any advice welcome!
We sadly miss the beauty and silliness of medieval cosmology: “The sun, moon, and stars go still round…for love of perfection. This love is manifest, I say, in inanimate creatures. How comes a loadstone to drawn iron to it? jet chaff? The ground to covet showers, but for love? No creature, St. Hierome concludes, is to be found…[that does not love something], no stock, no stone, that hath not some feeling of love. ‘Tis more eminent in plants, herbs, and is especially observed in vegetals…the olive and the myrtle embrace each other in roots and branches if they grow near…” Robert Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy .
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I'm not sure if you've already read some of their work. But here are a few of my favourite poems, by my favourite contemporary poets.
Marginalia, by Billy Collins : http://www.billy-collins.com/2005/06/marginalia.html
Farewell, by Agha Shahid Ali :
http://wonderingminstrels.blogspot.in/2002/12/farewell-agha-shahid-ali.html
Leaving and Leaving You, by Sophie Hannah :
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/leaving-and-leaving-you/
- Shruti
http://www.stpetershigh.org.uk/DEPARTMENTS/ENGLISH_DEPT/PRUSH/KS4_Resources/Freshwater/Motion_Freshwaterstuff/Freshwater.html
Daniel Berrigan - Selected & New Poems - the well known social activist and Jesuit priest, who served time in jail for such activities as burning draft records and pouring blood on nuclear warheads. I recently discovered this book in a small used book store (the best kind) in Sandpoint, Idaho and have been consistently floored by his poems, ranging from his stark early religious imagery to his final moving series about his friend Thomas Merton.
Christian Wiman - Every Riven Thing - I came across this amazing poet - also the editor of Poetry magazine - after reading his essay about his incurable disease in Image magazine.
Dana Gioia - Pity the Beautiful
Richard Skelton - ok, this guy is great, especially if you love the uk countryside - check his web site Corbal Stone Press to get an idea of his work. I first came across his work in a musical context via a cover story in The Wire music magazine - in an attempt to confront his grief over the early death of his first wife, he immersed himself in the countryside and wrote an incredible series of poems and prose fragments, in addition to composing sad drones which he recorded in the open moors. Can't rave enough...